Little Lion Heart
by codenamecynic
Summary: He loves her like everyone does, and fears her like no one else.   F!Hawke & Fenris


Originally submitted to fill the following prompt on the kink-meme:

_Part of the reason Fenris flees Hawke's bed is he is terrified of her. Hawke defines his life in Kirkwall- every step he has taken has been in her wake, every choice has been considered for her sake. __He can't leave and he can't stay and the though of losing Hawke makes him sick. __So Fenris angst basically_

* * *

><p>She was full of joy.<p>

It had taken him a while to realize it, to identify it for what it was, to understand that it wasn't a ruse or a façade or even a case of terminal optimism like he first thought. No matter what Hawke was doing, whether it was kissing the scraped knee of some filthy urchin in the Undercity, shamelessly picking Templar pockets or swinging the oversized meat cleavers that passed for her weapons into some unfortunate fool's face, she was doing it with a whole heart. Hawke knew who she was, and didn't give much consideration for what she was supposed to be.

That was also why she was a horrible Diamondback player. With cards, as with everything, if Hawke was in she was all in.

It had infuriated him for the longest time, until all he could ever seem to do was shout at her. It had taken even longer for him to realize that the reason for it was nothing more than the fact that she expected nothing of him other than that he keep his word.

To Hawke, he wasn't a slave. To Hawke, he was free, and that was an expectation one ought to have of a free man. A good man.

But he didn't see a free man, or a good one, when he looked in the mirror; he only ever saw a slave, hunted and disfigured and scared. So terribly alone, so empty, and without a word to keep. And so he smashed his mirrors and shoved away the smallest comforts and tried to push her until she broke, applying pressure to the weakest points and watching expectantly for her mask to peel away and expose the cruel reality beneath.

It never did and she never pushed back, not when she was angry and not when she was in his face, and not the one time he managed to make her cry in the foyer of the dilapidated old mansion where he lived. Not even that could he call his own, but her tears, her tears were his.

"I love you, you know," she said to him, long ago, long before anything other than a fragile sort of friendship had grown between them, on a day so typical it was entirely beneath notice except for this one thing. She said it and then smiled, just a wry twist of lips that said she knew exactly what he was thinking as he shuffled his feet in the Lowtown dirt and stared at her mouth instead of looking her in the eye. "It's a gift; no strings, no price. It's yours now, do with it as you like."

So he loved her, like everyone did. And he feared her, like no one else.

It had been fear to drive him from her bed that night, the night his blood had turned him into a baying wolf that howled at her door. It had been the fear more than the memories because, that night in the safe refuge that was Hawke's warm arms and fierce affections, she'd given him her lion's heart and tucked it away safe inside his chest.

_Come and be with me,_ that beating heart said. _Come and be free. Belong to me, let me hold you, let me touch you, let me love you, let me give you everything._

It filled him up, drowned out any other sound.

Almost.

His heart had been small then, like a rabbit, quivering and afraid, prey sensing predators everywhere. It told him to run and so he did, bound up in knots like the red ribbon around his wrist that he himself had put there.

And incomprehensibly he left it behind, and she picked it up like she did with so many small things. Small lost things, forgotten things, things that were broken, things she thought she could fix. She picked it up and she kept it, held it with reverence, fed it with words, with letters and quills and ink, strengthening it until it spoke for him and said: _I am not a slave_.

And meant it.

He tried to give it back to her, the little lion heart that beat inside his chest.

"It was a gift," she said and smiled, regretting nothing. "Keep it."


End file.
